This Thursday May 10th, faculty member Kathrin Golda Pongratz will kick off an international conference on the right to the city in Barcelona, in honor of the 50th year anniversary of the publication of Henri Lefebvre’s Right to the City.
Pongratz, an architect, urban planner and urban researcher focused on issues of participation and urban memory, will open the cycle of debates, introducing the discussion topics that will revolve around the right to the city and more specifically the right to housing. She will also give a short introductory presentation of David Madden and the book “In defense of Housing”.
The cycle of debates provides the occasion for an open debate among people from different parts of the world that are involved with the struggle for defending the right to affordable and adequate housing and aims to contextualize the Right to Housing under the larger framework of the Right to the City, understanding housing as a basic right that is closely linked to the way in which we interact with our communities, both in an immediate (neighborhood) and a larger scale (city).
“From the rise of rents to the systematic expulsion of neighbors, we are facing global challenges that have local consequences. Thus, it is fundamental to open up the debate, going across borders to exchange experiences and strengthen the resistance. With this goal in mind, Habitat International Coalition, Observatori DESC and the Global Platform for the Right to the City organize a cycle of conferences to gather different points of view from around the world to discuss what are the main challenges our communities are facing in terms of Right to Housing and to the City.”
The conference, which takes place on the 10th and 17th of May will focus on two main topics: first, gentrification and expulsion of neighbors and, second, the rise of rents and rent control as a potential solution. The idea is to mix a diagnosis of the situation with possible policy solutions and the experience of social movements.
For more info, download the pdf of the program.
I wish I could have joined you at the conference and hope you will have some proceedings we can enjoy from a distance. It’s an important global topic and one that I will be taking up at a conference in Bangkok later this summer with a paper on gentrification and human rights.
Graeme Bristol
Centre for Architecture and Human Rights